APPENDIX.

<< ORIENTAL ARCHITECTURE:INTRODUCTORY NOTE, CHINESE ARCHITECTURE

APPENDIX.

A. PRIMITIVE GREEK ARCHITECTURE.--The researches of Schliemann

commented by Schuchardt, of Dörpfeld, Stamakis, Tsoundas, Perrot, and others, in

Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns, and the more recent discoveries of Evans at Gnossus, in

Crete, have greatly extended our knowledge of the prehistoric art of Greece and the

Mediterranean basin, and established many points of contact on the one hand with

ancient Egyptian and Phoenician art, and on the other, with the art of historic

Greece. They have proved the existence of an active and flourishing commerce

between Egypt and the Mediterranean shores and Aegean islands more than 2000

B.C., and of a flourishing material civilization in those islands and on the mainland

of Greece, borrowing much, but not everything, from Egypt. While the origin of the

Doric order in the structural methods of the pre-Homeric architecture of Tiryns and

Mycenæ, as set forth by Dörpfeld and by Perrot and Chipiez, can hardly be regarded

as proved in all details, since much of the argument advanced for this derivation

rests on more or less conjectural restorations of the existing remains, it seems to be

fairly well established that the Doric order, and historic Greek architecture in

general, trace their genesis in large measure back in direct line to this prehistoric art.

The remarkable feature of this early architecture is the apparently complete absence

of temples. Fortifications, houses, palaces, and tombs make up the ruins thus far

discovered, and seem to indicate clearly the derivation of the temple-type of later

Greek art from the primitive house, consisting of a hall or megaron with four

columns about the central hearth (whence no doubt, the atrium and peristyle of

Roman houses, through their Greek intermediary prototypes) and a porch or

aithousa, with or without columns in antis, opening directly into the megaron, or

indirectly through an ante-room called the prodomos. Here we have the prototypes of

the Greek temple in antis, with its naos having interior columns, whether roofed over

or hypæthral. It is probable also that the evidently liberal use of timber for many of

the structural details led in time to many of the forms later developed in stone in the

entablature of the Doric order. But it is hard to discover, as Dörpfeld would have it,

in the slender Mycenæan columns with their inverted taper, the prototype of the

massive Doric column with its upward taper. The Mycenæan column was evidently

derived from wooden models; the sturdy Doric column--the earliest being the most

massive--seems plainly derived from stone or rubble piers, and thus to have come

from a different source from the Mycenæan forms.

The gynecæum, or women's apartments, the men's apartments, and the bath were in

these ancient palaces grouped in varying relations about the megaron: their plan,

purpose, and arrangement are clearly revealed in the ruins of Tiryns, where they are

more complete and perfect than either at Troy or Mycenæ.

B. CAMPANILES IN ITALY.--Reference is made on page 264 to the towers or

campaniles of the Italian Gothic style and period, and six of these are specifically

mentioned; and on page 305 mention is also made of those of the Renaissance in

Italy. The number and importance of the Italian campaniles and the interest

attaching to their origin and design, warrant a more extended notice than has been

assigned them in the pages cited.

The oldest of these bell-towers appear to be those adjoining the two churches of San

Apollinare in and near Ravenna, and date presumably from the sixth century. They

are plain circular towers with few and small openings, except in the uppermost story,

where larger arched openings permit the issue of the sound of the bells. This type,

which might have been developed into a very interesting form of tower, does not

seem to have been imitated. It was at Rome, and not till the ninth or tenth century,

that the campanile became a recognized feature of church architecture. It was

invariably treated as a structure distinct from the church, and was built of brick

upon a square plan, rising with little or no architectural adornment to a height

usually of a hundred feet or more, and furnished with but a few small openings

below the belfry stage, where a pair of coupled arched windows separated by a

simple column opened from each face of the tower. Above these windows a

pyramidal roof of low pitch terminated the tower. In spite of their simplicity of

design these Roman bell-towers often possess a noticeable grace of proportions, and

furnish the prototype of many of the more elaborate campaniles erected during the

Middle Ages in other central and north Italian cities. The towers of Sta. Maria in

Cosmedin, Sta. Maria in Trastevere, and S. Giorgio in Velabro are examples of this

type. Most of the Roman examples date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In other cities, the campanile was treated with some variety of form and decoration,

as well as of material. In Lombardy and Venetia the square red-brick shaft of the

tower is often adorned with long, narrow pilaster strips, as at Piacenza (Fig. 91) and

Venice, and an arcaded cornice not infrequently crowns the structure. The openings

at the top may be three or four in number on each face, and even the plan is

sometimes octagonal or circular. The brick octagonal campanile of S. Gottardo at

Milan is one of the finest Lombard church towers. At Verona the brick tower on the

Piazza dell' Erbe and that of S. Zeno are conspicuous; but every important town of

northern Italy possesses one or more examples of these structures dating from the

eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century.

Undoubtedly the three most noted bell-towers in Italy are those of Venice, Pisa, and

Florence. The great Campanile of St. Mark at Venice, first begun in 874, carried

higher in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and finally completed in the sixteenth

century with the marble belvedere and wooden spire so familiar in pictures of

Venice, was formerly the highest of all church campaniles in Italy, measuring

approximately 325 feet to the summit. But this superb historic monument, weakened

by causes not yet at this writing fully understood, fell in sudden ruin on the 14th of

July, 1902, to the great loss not only of Venice, but of the world of art, though

fortunately without injuring the neighboring buildings on the Piazza and Piazzetta of

St. Mark. Since then the campanile of S. Stefano, in the same city, has been

demolished to forestall another like disaster. The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Fig. 92)

dates from 1174, and is unique in its plan and its exterior treatment with

superposed arcades. Begun apparently as a leaning tower, it seems to have increased

this lean to a dangerous point, by the settling of its foundations during construction,

as its upper stages were made to deviate slightly towards the vertical from the

inclination of the lower portion. It has always served rather as a watch-tower and

belvedere than as a bell-tower. The Campanile adjoining the Duomo at Florence is

described on p. 263 and illustrated in Fig. 154, and does not require further notice

here. The black-and-white banded towers of Sienna, Lucca, and Pistoia, and the

octagonal lanterns crowning those of Verona and Mantua, also referred to in the text

on p. 264, need here only be mentioned again as illustrating the variety of treatment

of these Italian towers.

The Renaissance architects developed new types of campanile, and in such variety

that they can only be briefly referred to. Some, like a brick tower at Perugia, are

simple square towers with pilasters; more often engaged columns and entablatures

mark the several stories, and the upper portion is treated either with an octagonal

lantern or with diminishing stages, and sometimes with a spire. Of the latter class

the best example is that of S. Biagio, at Montepulciano,--one of the two designed to

flank the façade of Ant. da S. Gallo's beautiful church of that name. One or two good

late examples are to be found at Naples. Of the more massive square type there are

examples in the towers of S. Michele, Venice; of the cathedral at Ferrara, Sta. Chiara

at Naples, and Sta. Maria dell' Anima--one of the earliest--at Rome. The most

complete and perfect of these square belfries of the Renaissance is that of the

Campidoglio at Rome, by Martino Lunghi, dating from the end of the sixteenth

century, which groups so admirably with the palaces of the Capitol.

C. BRAMANTE'S WORKS.--A more or less animated controversy has arisen

regarding the authenticity of many of the works attributed to Bramante, and the

tendency has of late been to deny him any part whatever in several of the most

important of these works. The first of these to be given a changed assignment was

the church of the Consolazione at Todi, now believed to be by Cola di Caprarola; and

it is now denied by many investigators that either the Cancelleria or the Giraud

palace is his work, or any one of two or three smaller houses in Rome showing a

somewhat similar architectural treatment. The evidence adduced in support of this

denial is rather speculative and critical than documentary, but is not without weight.

The date 1495 carved on a doorway of the Cancelleria palace is thought to forbid its

attribution to Bramante, who is not known to have come to Rome till 1503; and

there is a lack of positive evidence of his authorship of the Giraud palace and the

other houses which seem to be by the same hand as the Cancelleria. To the advocates

of this view there is not enough resemblance in style between this group of buildings

and his acknowledged work either in Milan or in the Vatican to warrant their being

attributed to him.

It must, however, be remarked, that this notable group of works, stamped with the

marks and even the mannerisms of a strong personality, reveal in their unknown

author gifts amounting to genius, and heretofore deemed not unworthy of Bramante.

It is almost inconceivable that they should have been designed by a mere beginner

previously utterly unknown and forgotten soon after. It is incumbent upon those who

deny the attribution to Bramante to find another name, if possible, on which to

fasten the credit of these works. Accordingly, they have been variously attributed to

Alberti (who died in 1472) or his followers; to Bernardo di Lorenzo, and to other

later fifteenth-century artists. The difficulty here is to discover any name that fits the

conditions even as well as Bramante's; for the supposed author must have been in

Rome between 1495 and 1505, and his other works must be at least as much like

these as were Bramante's. No name has thus far been found satisfactory to careful

critics; and the alternative theory, that there existed in Rome, before Bramante's

coming, a group of architects unknown to later fame, working in a common style and

capable of such a masterpiece as the Cancelleria, does not harmonize with the

generally accepted facts of Renaissance art history. Moreover, the comparison of

these works with Bramante's Milanese work on the one hand and his great Court of

the Belvedere in the Vatican on the other, yields, to some critics, conclusions quite

opposed to those of the advocates of another authorship than Bramante's.

The controversy must be considered for the present as still open. There are manifest

difficulties with either of the two opposed views, and these can hardly be eliminated,

except by the discovery of documents not now known to exist, whose testimony will

be recognized as unimpeachable.

D. L'ART NOUVEAU.--Since 1896, and particularly since the Paris Exposition of

1900, a movement has manifested itself in France and Belgium, and spread to

Germany and Austria and even measurably to England, looking towards a more

personal and original style of decorative and architectural design, in which the

traditions and historic styles of the past shall be ignored. This movement has

received from its adherents and the public the name of "L'Art Nouveau," or,

according to some, "L'Art Moderne"; but this name must not be held to connote

either a really new style or a fundamentally new principle in art. Indeed, it may be

questioned whether any clearly-defined body of principles whatever underlies the

movement, or would be acknowledged equally by all its adherents. It appears to be a

reaction against a too slavish adherence to traditional forms and methods of design,

a striving to ignore or forget the past rather than a reaching out after any well-

understood, positive end; as such, it possesses the negative strength of protest rather

than the affirmative strength of a vital principle. Its lack of cohesion is seen in the

division of its adherents into groups, some looking to nature for inspiration, while

others decry this as a mistaken quest; some seeking to emphasize structural lines,

and others to ignore them altogether. All, however, are united in the avoidance of

commonplace forms and historic styles, and this preoccupation has developed an

amazing amount of originality and individualism of style, frequently reaching the

extreme of eccentricity. The results have therefore been, as might be expected,

extremely varied in merit, ranging from the most refined and reserved in style to the

most harshly bizarre and extravagant. As a rule, they have been most successful in

small and semi-decorative objects--jewelry, silverware, vases, and small furniture;

and one most desirable feature of the movement has been the stimulus it has given

(especially in France and England), to the organization and activity of "arts-and-

crafts" societies which occupy themselves with the encouragement of the decorative

and industrial arts and the diffusion of an improved taste. In the field of the larger

objects of design, in which the dominance of traditional form and of structural

considerations is proportionally more imperious, the struggle to evade these

restrictions becomes more difficult, and results usually in more obvious and

disagreeable eccentricities, which the greater size and permanence of the object tend

further to exaggerate. The least successful achievements of the movement have

accordingly been in architecture. The buildings designed by its most fervent disciples

(e.g. the Pavillon Bleu at the Exposition of 1900, the Castel Béranger, Paris, by

H. Guimard, the houses of the artist colony at Darmstadt, and others) are for the

most part characterized by extreme stiffness, eccentricity, or ugliness. The

requirements of construction and of human habitation cannot easily be met without

sometimes using the forms which past experience has developed for the same ends;

and the negation of precedent is not the surest path to beauty or even reasonableness

of design. It is interesting to notice that in the intermediate field of furniture-design

some of the best French productions recall the style of Louis XV., modified by

Japanese ideas and spirit. This singular but not unpleasing combination is less

surprising when we reflect that the style of Louis XV. was itself a protest against the

formalism of the heavy classic architecture of preceding reigns, and achieved its

highest successes in the domain of furniture and interior decoration.

It may be fair to credit the new movement with one positive characteristic in its

prevalent regard for line, especially for the effect of long and swaying lines, whether

in the contours or ornamentation of an object. This is especially noticeable in the

Belgian work, and in that of the Viennese "Secessionists," who have, however,

carried eccentricity to a further point of extravagance than any others.

Whether "L'Art Nouveau" will ever produce permanent results time alone can show.

Its present vogue is probably evanescent and it cannot claim to have produced a

style; but it seems likely to exert on European architecture an influence, direct and

indirect, not unlike that of the Néo-Grec movement of 1830 in France, but even

more lasting and beneficial. It has already begun to break the hold of rigid classical

tradition in design; and recent buildings, especially in Germany and Austria, like the

works of the brilliant Otto Wagner in Vienna, show a pleasing freedom of personal

touch without undue striving after eccentric novelty. Doubtless in French and other

European architecture the same result will in time manifest itself.

The search for novelty and the desire to dispense wholly with historic forms of

design which are the chief marks of the Art Nouveau, were emphatically displayed in

many of the remarkable buildings of the Paris Exhibition of 1900, in which a

striking fertility and facility of design in the decorative details made more

conspicuous the failure to improve upon the established precedents of architectural

style in the matters of proportion, scale, general composition, and contour. As usual

the metallic construction of these buildings was almost without exception admirable,

and the decorative details, taken by themselves, extremely clever and often beautiful,

but the combined result was not satisfactory.

In the United States the movement has not found a firm foothold because there has

been no dominant, enslaving tradition to protest against. Not a few of the ideas, not

a little of the spirit of the movement may be recognized in the work of individual

architects and decorative artists in the United States, executed years before the

movement took recognizable form in Europe: and American decorative design has

generally been, at least since 1880 or 1885, sufficiently free, individual and

personal, to render unnecessary and impossible any concerted movement of artistic

revolt against slavery to precedent.

E. RECENT AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE.--Architectural activity in the United

States continues to share in the general prosperity which has marked the years since

1898, and this activity has by no means been confined to industrial and commercial

architecture. Indeed, while the erection of "sky scrapers" or excessively lofty office-

buildings has continued to be a feature of this activity in the great commercial

centres, the most notable architectural enterprises of recent years have been in the

field of educational buildings, both in the East and West. In 1898 a great

international competition resulted in the selection of the design of Mr. E. Bénard of

Paris for a magnificent group of buildings for the University of California on a scale

of unexampled grandeur, and the erection of this colossal project has been begun. An

almost equally ambitious project, by a firm of Philadelphia architects, has been

adopted for the Washington University at St. Louis; and many other universities and

colleges have either added extensively to their existing buildings or planned an entire

rebuilding on new designs. Among these the national military and naval academies at

West Point and Annapolis take the first rank in the extent and splendor of the

projected improvements. Museums and libraries have also been erected or begun in

various cities, and the New York Public Library, now building, will rank in cost and

beauty with those already erected in Boston and Washington.

In other departments mention should be made

of recent Federal buildings (custom-

houses, post-offices, and court-houses) erected

under the provisions of the Tarsney

act from designs secured by competition among

the leading architects of the country;

among those the New York Custom House

is the most important, but other

buildings, at Washington, Indianapolis, and elsewhere, are also conspicuous, and

many of them worthy of high praise. The tendency to award the designing of

important public buildings, such as State capitols, county court houses, city halls,

libraries, and hospitals, by competition instead of by personal and political favor, has

resulted in a marked improvement in the quality of American public architecture.

F. THE ERECHTHEUM: RECENT INVESTIGATIONS.--During the past two years,

extensive repairs and partial restorations of the Erechtheum at Athens, undertaken

by the Greek Archæological Society, have afforded opportunities for a new and

thoroughgoing study of the existing portions of the building and of the surrounding

ruins. In these investigations a prominent part has been borne by Mr. Gorham

P. Stevens, representing the Archæological Institute of America, to whom must be

credited, among other things, the demonstration of the existence, in the east wall of

the original structure, of two windows previously unknown. Other peculiarities of

design and construction were also discovered, which add greatly to the interest of the

building. These investigations are reported in the American Journal of Archæology,

Second Series; Journal of the Archæological Institute of America, Vol. X., No. 1, et seq.

The illustrations, Figures 35 and 36, are, by Mr. Stevens' courtesy, based upon,

though not reproductions of, his original drawings.

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GLOSSARY

OF TERMS NOT DEFINED IN THE TEXT.

ALCAZAR (Span., from Arabic Al Kasr), a palace or castle, especially of a governing

official.

ARCHIVOLT, a band or group of mouldings decorating the wall-face of an arch; or a

transverse arch projecting slightly from the surface of a barrel or groined vault.

ASTYLAR, without columns.

BALNEA, a Roman bathing establishment, less extensive than the thermæ.

BEL ETAGE, the principal story of a building, containing the reception rooms and

saloons; usually the second story (first above the ground story).

BROKEN ENTABLATURE, an entablature which projects forward over each column or

pilaster, returning back to the wall and running along with diminished projection

between the columns, as in the Arch of Constantine (Fig. 63).

CANTONED PIERS, piers adorned with columns or pilasters at the corners or on the

outer faces.

CARTOUCHE (Fr.), an ornament shaped like a shield or oval. In Egyptian hieroglyphics,

the oval encircling the name of a king.

CAVETTO, a concave, quarter-round moulding.

CHEVRON, a V-shaped ornament.

CHRYSELEPHANTINE, of ivory and gold; used of statues in which the nude portions are

of ivory and the draperies of gold.

CONSOLE, a large scroll-shaped bracket or ornament, having its broadest curve at the

bottom.

CORINTHIANESQUE, resembling the Corinthian; used of capitals having corner-volutes

and acanthus leaves, but combined otherwise than in the classic Corinthian type.

EMPAISTIC, made of, or overlaid with, sheet-metal beaten or hammered into

decorative patterns.

EXEDRÆ, curved seats of stone; niches or recesses, sometimes of considerable size,

provided with seats for the public.

FENESTRATION, the whole system or arrangement of windows and openings in an

architectural composition.

FOUR-PART. A four-part vault is a groined vault formed by the intersection of two

barrel vaults. Its diagonal edges or groins divide it into four sections, triangular in

plan, each called a compartment.

GIGANTOMACHIA, a group or composition representing the mythical combat between

the gods and the giants.

HALF-TIMBERED, constructed with a timber framework showing externally, and filled

in with masonry or brickwork.

IMAUM, imâm, a Mohammedan priest.

KAABAH, the sacred shrine at Meccah, a nearly cubical structure hung with black

cloth.

KARAFAH, a region in Cairo containing the so-called tombs of the Khalifs.

LACONICUM, the sweat-room in a Roman bath; usually of domical design in the larger

thermæ.

MEZZANINE, a low, intermediate story.

MUEDDIN, a Mohammedan mosque-official who calls to prayer.

NARTHEX, a porch or vestibule running across the front of a basilica or church.

NEO-GOTHIC,

in a style which seeks to revive and adapt or apply to modern uses

the forms of the Middle Ages.

NEO-MEDIÆVAL,

OCULUS, a circular opening, especially in the crown of a dome.

OGEE ARCH, one composed of two juxtaposed S-shaped or wavy curves, meeting in a

point at the top.

PALÆSTRA, an establishment among the ancient Greeks for physical training.

PAVILION (Fr. pavillon), ordinarily a light open structure of ornate design. As applied

to architectural composition, a projecting section of a façade, usually rectangular in

plan, and having its own distinct mass of roof.

QUARRY ORNAMENT, any ornament covering a surface with two series of reticulated

lines enclosing approximately quadrangular spaces or meshes.

QUATREFOIL, with four leaves or foils; composed of four arcs of circles meeting in

cusps pointing inward.

QUOINS, slightly projecting blocks of stone, alternately long and short, decorating or

strengthening a corner or angle of a façade.

REVETMENT, a veneering or sheathing.

RUSTICATION, treatment of the masonry with blocks having roughly broken faces, or

with deeply grooved or bevelled joints.

SOFFIT, the under-side of an architrave, beam, arch, or corona.

SPANDRIL, the triangular wall-space between two contiguous arches.

SQUINCH, a bit of conical vaulting filling in the angles of a square so as to provide an

octagonal or circular base for a dome or lantern.

STOA, an open colonnade for public resort.

TEPIDARIUM, the hot-water hall or chamber of a Roman bath.

TYMPANUM, the flat space comprised between the horizontal and raking cornices of a

pediment, or between a lintel and the arch over it.

VOUSSOIR, any one of the radial stones composing an arch.

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